


Play

by samskeyti



Category: Downton Abbey
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-18
Updated: 2011-06-18
Packaged: 2017-10-20 12:34:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,110
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/212824
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/samskeyti/pseuds/samskeyti
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which William plays piano and Thomas is everywhere. For the porn battle prompt "caught" and as usual beyond late and pornless.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Play

**Author's Note:**

> Warning: This is pretty much entirely workplace harassment.

Thomas, you see, he gets a thought in his head — flimsy or cruel, doesn’t matter — he gets a thought and he sets about (or waits about, more often than not it’s simply time with that bastard) making it turn to truth.

William’s thoughts are bound to come true only through the direst accidents and they are not, he hopes, what any of the others would suspect. They’re not well matched to him at all, but still he feels they follow him like a pack of hounds, slavering and rowdy at the first scent of _him_ , impossible to overlook.

William plays for them all after supper, a brief sit down for tea and chat, the soft murmuring not a distraction at all with Anna humming, tripping over a few words before she trails off into silence again, her head nodding, a few strands of her hair falling loose. Daisy sitting off to the side, looking and not looking and daring herself to look again until William hears Thomas shift in his chair, cough and settle. He must be leaning back, his eyes dark and haughty, his strong wrists and slender fingers resting on the table, the curve of his lips set in amusement, in dismissal of Daisy’s attentions, of them all. He might be expected to leave but he doesn’t, even if William can never tell whether he pays any attention to the music. He doesn’t get to his feet until later, until a few bars from the end of the last tune when, with cigarettes secreted in a pocket and a late-remembered errand on his face he slips through the door. William doesn’t look.

And now it’s late, he’s returned to the piano and there’s no-one listening as he plunks a few quiet notes, more, carefully and still there’s no-one and if he plays the right notes, times it a little like breath, a little like boot-steps, he can keep some thoughts unheard. His fingers fit the keys exactly as he wants, move fluid and gentle around the shape of the sound he has in mind. He smiles a little.

Someone once told him his hands were pretty and William was struck dumb with the shock and the longing of it. The man had run his fingers (rough at the edges, a whiff of leather and burnt toast) along William’s jaw, skirted his lips as William left his eyes closed and tried not to breathe too much. He’d not been in service long, he’d scarcely been to the city before, certainly never by himself. He remembers dread rising like a hot mist about his ears, remembers feeling he may drown in his own heartbeat, remembers knowing, clearly and suddenly, that there was no mistake about this.

He never saw that man again.

Thomas is not the same, is not someone to trust this to and if William were to stand at the edge of his thoughts, somewhere vast and beautiful and too deep and dense to see inside, a forest say, or a dark blue lake — if he were to summon up the courage to say, _come with me_ or more realistically, the courage to let himself be convinced to follow, he knows, of course he knows it would never be someone like Thomas. It’s all a cold and mildly interesting game to a man like him.

William startles. There’s a note missed, or rather more than one, and badly. He’s at William’s shoulder, from nowhere. He smells of tobacco and a faint sweat, not quite a day’s work and he wears the smooth, watchful face he has when thinking. He has a hand curled on the top of the upright, his fingers sallow against the wood. He has his eyes on the keys, on William’s wrist, his shoulder, noting the flush creeping down William’s neck, the hair that’s fallen over his forehead so that the ends stick to his skin. William fits his teeth silently together and Thomas smiles at him, the bright, convincing smile that starts with a flash a teeth and ends in almost a laugh as he reaches to smooth his hair, brushing the loose blond strands from William’s eyes. William stamps on the pedal and mangles his chords and in the echoes he finds himself staring up at Thomas who is not a hound after all, but a dark-eyed hawk, bending towards him.

Tobacco and aniseed and somebody’s whiskey — he’s forceful and William, who’d thought _don’t trust him, don’t_ in what he told himself were his last moments of secrecy, of safety even as he knew, heart of hearts, that all of that was already cast away. William, wondering at how thin and bland it felt to have his worst fears realised, the way a man might notice the step just taken off a bridge, standing on air and not trusting it a bit — William has his mouth open from the start.

When Thomas pulls away William half expects to be met with open mockery and when the edges of Thomas’ lips curve up as if in wonder, as if in pleasure or perhaps in triumph, as if he’s going to move away and crow, William grabs his tie and pulls him down, fast. Thomas yields more completely that he expected and William kisses through the collision. He can taste the grazes on their lips and one of his fingers presses a bruise into Thomas’ throat. When he stands and pushes at Thomas, his tie still in his fist, walking him backwards, Thomas goes and he makes a ragged, pliant noise when William shoves him against the wall. He has his hand against Thomas’ trousers and leans his weight, the length of his body on him. Thomas groans, William thinks most of the sound is Thomas, his breath is a quick, stuttering heat on William’s neck now and William doesn’t know what to do with this — the way he can feel Thomas swelling under his strokes, the dark fringe of his eyelashes against his red cheeks, Thomas who never blushes — he has no idea what he is doing but has brought him, nonetheless, to _this._

He untangles himself from Thomas, steps back and looks at him, open-mouthed, debauched, the first person William’s seen like this, his eyes snapping open to gaze at him, intense and unfocussed at once. It’s a thrill William never knew existed. He grins, wolfish, delighted before he schools his expression into a pretense at apology. He shrugs a slow and unconvincing shrug and somehow he keeps his voice steady as he says that he’s afraid he has to go. He doesn’t stop to close the door and he doesn’t look back.


End file.
